As far back as 1959, Hubbard warned that illness and even death can
befall those seeking to impede Scientology, known within the church as
"suppressive persons."

"Literally, it kills them," Hubbard wrote, "and if you don't
believe me I can show you the long death list."

He told the story of an electrician who bilked the organization.
"Within a few weeks," Hubbard said, "he contracted TB."

Scientology seems committed not only to fighting back, but to
chilling potential opposition. For years, the church has been accused
of employing psychological warfare, dirty tricks and
harassment-by-lawsuit to silence its adversaries.

The church has spent millions to investigate and sue writers,
government officials, disaffected ex-members and others loosely
defined as "enemies."

Teams of private detectives have been dispatched to the far corners
of the world to spy on critics and rummage through their personal
lives -- and trash cans -- for information to discredit them.

During one investigation, headed by a former Los Angeles police
sergeant, the church paid tens of thousands of dollars to reputed
organized crime figures and con men for information linking a leading
church opponent to a crime that it turned out he did not commit.

Early last year, an American Scientologist was arrested in Spain
for possessing dossiers containing confidential information on a
member of Parliament and a Madrid judge who is oversaw a fraud and tax
evasion probe of the church. The dossiers included personal bank
records and family photographs, according to press accounts.

Before a British author's critical biography of Hubbard was even
released two years ago in Europe, the church had him and his publisher
tied up in a London court for alleged copyright infringement. The
writer speculated that Scientology sympathizers had somehow managed to
obtain pre-publication proofs of the book.

Scientology spokesmen insist that the organization is doing nothing
illegal or unethical, and is merely exercising its constitutional
rights with vigor.

They argue that Scientology has been targeted by hostile government
and private forces -- including the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI,
the press, psychiatrists and unscrupulous attorneys -- that have
persecuted the church since its founding three decades ago.

As a matter of self-preservation, lamented Scientology attorney
Earle C. Cooley, the church has been forced to fight back and then has
been unfairly chastised for its aggressiveness.

"When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor we didn't just sit back and
defend there," Cooley declared. "We tried to get out on the offensive
as quickly as possible.... To sit back and ward off the blows is
ridiculous."

Underlying the church's aggressive response to criticism is a
belief that anyone who attacks Scientology is a criminal of some
sort. "We do not find critics of Scientology who do not have criminal
pasts," Hubbard wrote back in 1967. "Over and over we prove this."

When Scientology takes the offensive, L. Ron Hubbard's writings
provide the inspiration. Here is a sampling of what Hubbard wrote:

"The purpose of the (lawsuit) is to harass and discourage rather
than win."

"If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any
organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to
cause them to sue for peace.... Don't ever defend. Always attack."

"We do not want Scientology to be reported in the press, anywhere
else than on the religious pages of newspapers.... Therefore, we
should be very alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance so as
to discourage the public presses from mentioning Scientology."

"NEVER agree to an investigation of Scientology. Only agree to an
investigation of the attackers.... Start feeding lurid, blood, sex
crime, actual evidence on the attack to the press. Don't ever tamely
submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers
all the way."

Obedience to these rules is not discretionary. They are scripture
and, as such, have guided a succession of church leaders in their
responses to perceived attacks.

Ironically, Hubbard's doctrinal dictums have often served only to
escalate conflicts and reinforce the cultish image the church has been
trying to shake.

In the early 1970s, British lawmaker Sir John Foster offered a
seemingly timeless observation on Scientology in a report to his
government.

He wrote that "anyone whose attitude is such as Mr. Hubbard
displays in his writings cannot be too surprised if the world treats
him with suspicion rather than affection."

Defeating its antagonists is considered so vital to the religion's
survival that the church has a unit whose mandate is to bring "hostile
philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the
goals of Scientology."

Called the Office of Special Affairs, its duties include developing
legal strategy and countering outside threats.

Its predecessor was the Guardian Office, whose members became so
overzealous that Hubbard's wife and 10 other Scientologists were
jailed for bugging and burglarizing U.S. government agencies in the
1970s.

Now, Scientology spokesmen say, attorneys are hired to handle
conflicts with church adversaries to ensure that history does not
repeat itself. The attorneys, they say, employ private detectives to
help prepare court cases -- a role that, in the past, would have been
filled by Scientologists from the Guardian Office.

But some former Scientologists contend that the private detectives
have simply replaced church members as agents of intimidation. The
detectives are especially valued because they insulate the church from
deceptive and potentially embarrassing investigative tactics that the
church in fact endorses, according to this view.

One of the first private detectives hired by the church was Richard
Bast of Washington, D.C.

In 1980, he investigated the sex life of U.S. District Judge James
Richey, who was presiding over the criminal trial of Hubbard's wife
and the 10 other Scientologists. Richey had issued rulings unfavorable
to them.

Bast's investigators found a prostitute at the Brentwood Holiday
Inn who claimed that Richey had purchased her services while staying
at the hotel during trips to Los Angeles. Bast's men gave her a lie
detector test and videotaped her account.

That and other information obtained by Bast's investigators was
leaked to columnist Jack Anderson, and appeared in newspapers across
the country. Soon after, Richey resigned from the case, citing health
reasons.

In 1982, Bast surfaced again, this time in Clearwater, Fla., where
the church's secretive methods of operating had stirred community
anxiety.

Bast's detectives, posing as emissaries of a wealthy European
industrialist, lured some of the community's most prominent
businessmen aboard a luxurious yacht. Their pitch: the industrialist
wanted to invest $100 million in Clearwater's decaying downtown.

But there was a catch, recalled developer Alan Bomstein, one of the
businessmen being wooed. The emissaries said their boss was dismayed
by the conflict between Clearwater and Scientology, and wanted the
businessmen to help quash a public inquiry into the church's
activities.

When the businessmen refused, Bomstein said, the emissaries
vanished. Two years later, Bast revealed the deception in a court
declaration. He said the undercover operation was necessary to learn
whether Clearwater's elite were conspiring to run the church out of
town.

More recently, Scientology investigations have been run by former
Los Angeles Police Department sergeant Eugene Ingram, who was fired by
the department in 1981 for allegedly running a house of prostitution
and alerting a drug dealer of a planned raid. (In a later jury trial,
Ingram was acquitted of all criminal charges.)

When he needs help, Ingram has sometimes turned to former LAPD
colleagues.

Ex-officer Al Bei, for example, played a key role in a 1984
investigation of David Mayo, an influential Scientology defector who
had opened a rival church near Santa Barbara. Scientologists believed
Mayo was using stolen Hubbard teachings.

Bei and other investigators questioned local businessmen, handing
out business cards that said, "Special Agent, Task Force on White
Collar Crime."

Their questions suggested -- falsely -- that Mayo was linked to
international terrorism and drug smuggling, according to court
records. At a local bank, Bei tried without success to obtain Mayo's
banking records and implied that Mayo was engaged in money laundering,
an executive of the bank said.

The investigators rented an office directly above Mayo's facility
and leaned from the windows to photograph everyone who entered.

Mayo eventually obtained a court order barring Ingram
Investigations and church members from going near Mayo or his
facility. The judge said the investigation amounted to "harassment."

On another occasion, Bei surfaced on a quiet residential street in
Burbank, where he questioned neighbors of two highly critical former
Scientologists, Fred and Valerie Stansfield. The Stansfields had
established a competing center in their home to provide Scientology
courses.

One of the neighbors said in a declaration that Bei attempted to
"slander" the Stansfields with such questions as: "Did you know that
Valerie told someone that she had pinworms two years ago?"

Los Angeles police officer Philip Rodriguez is another who has
assisted Ingram in Scientology investigations.

In late 1984, he provided Ingram with a letter on plain stationery
saying Ingram was authorized to covertly videotape a hostile former
member suspected by church authorities of plotting illegal acts
against the church.

Although the letter was written without official police department
approval, Rodriguez's action lent an air of legitimacy to the
investigation. In fact, when church officials disclosed its results,
they described the operation as "LAPD sanctioned" -- a
characterization that Police Chief Daryl F. Gates angrily disputed.

Rodriguez was suspended for six months for his role in the affair.

And when the clandestine videotapes were introduced in an Oregon
court to discredit testimony by the former member, the presiding judge
said: "I think they are devastating against the church.... It (the
investigation) borders on entrapment more than it does on anything
else."

Another former LAPD officer, Charles Stapleton, worked part time
for Ingram while teaching law at Los Angeles City College.

"Gene is a very thorough investigator," Stapleton said in an
interview. "He is determined to do the finest job he possibly can and
he will employ whatever methods or tactics are necessary to do that
job."

Stapleton said he "bailed out" after Ingram asked him to tap
telephones.

"Who's going to know?" he quoted Ingram as saying.

"I will know," Stapleton said he replied.

"I was told that if I didn't want to do it, he knew somebody who
would," Stapleton said, adding that he did not know whether any
telephones had, in fact, been monitored.

Ingram denied ever asking Stapleton to tap telephones.

"I've never done it and I've never asked anyone to do it," Ingram
said. "It's just not worth it. It's a crime. You're going to get
caught, so why do it?"

Ingram also said that he has not harassed anyone during his
probes. He describes himself simply as "aggressive."

"People who claim that I have conducted an improper investigation
against them probably have so many things to hide," said Ingram.

Church lawyer Cooley backed the investigator, saying: "I know of no
impropriety that has ever been engaged in by Mr. Ingram or any other
(private investigator) for the church. Mr. Ingram has done nothing
wrong."

Last year, Ingram and his colleagues surfaced in the small town of
Newkirk, Okla., to investigate city officials and the local newspaper
publisher. The publisher has been crusading against a controversial
Scientology-backed drug treatment program called Narconon.

At the core of the dispute is a contention by publisher Bob
Lobsinger that Narconon concealed its Scientology connection when it
leased an abandoned school outside town to build the "world's largest"
drug rehabilitation center.

Lobsinger's weekly newspaper has written about Scientology's
troubled past, and published internal documents on the drug
program. In the process, he has helped rally community opposition.

Fighting back, Scientology attorneys in September mailed an "open
letter" to many of Newkirk's 2,500 residents announcing that Ingram
had been hired to investigate Narconon's adversaries. The letter said
that "a few local individuals have sought to create intolerance by
broadsiding the Churches of Scientology in stridently uncomplimentary
terms."

After arriving in town, Ingram tracked down the mayor's 12-year-old
son at the local public library, handed him a business card and told
the boy to have his father call, Lobsinger said. "It was just a subtle
bit of intimidation," he said. "It certainly did not do the mother
much good. She was very unnerved."

Lobsinger said investigators also camped out at the local
courthouse, where they searched public records for "dirt" on prominent
local citizens.

"They were checking up on the banker, the president of the school
board, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and, of course, the
mayor and his family, and me," Lobsinger said.

Newkirk Mayor Garry Bilger, who opposed the drug treatment program,
said a man he believes was a church member tried to coax him into
disclosing personal information. Bilger said the man showed up without
an appointment and claimed that he was helping his daughter with a
report on small-town government for a class at a nearby high school.

"He wanted to interview me and take pictures around the office but
I didn't allow that," the mayor recalled. "Finally, I said, 'Are you
with Scientology or Narconon?' He said, 'I don't know about those
people.' But he did, because he got outta there in a hurry."

Before the man left, he gave Bilger the name of his daughter. The
mayor then checked with the school system and was told that no such
girl was enrolled.

"They have a standard pattern," Bilger said of the Scientologists.
"They try to be very aggressive. They try to intimidate. This is not
the kind of atmosphere we need in the Newkirk community.... This tells
me they are far from being harmless."

Scientology critics contend that one church writing, above all
others, has guided the organization and its operatives when they fight
back. It is called the Fair Game Law.

Written by Hubbard in the mid-1960s, it states that anyone who
impedes Scientology is "fair game" and can "be deprived of property or
injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of
the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

Church spokesmen maintain that Hubbard rescinded the policy three
years after it was written because its meaning had been twisted. What
Hubbard actually meant, according to the spokesmen, was that
Scientology will not protect ex-members from people in the outside
world who try to trick, sue or destroy them.

But various judges and juries have concluded that while the actual
labeling of persons as "fair game" was abandoned, the harassment
continued unabated.

For example, a Los Angeles jury in 1986 said that Scientologists
had employed fair game tactics against disaffected member Larry
Wollersheim, driving him to the brink of financial and mental
collapse. He was awarded $30 million. In July, the state Court of
Appeal reduced the amount to $2.5 million but refused to overturn the
case.

Wrote Justice Earl Johnson Jr.: "Scientology leaders made the
deliberate decision to ruin Wollersheim economically and possibly
psychologically.... Such conduct is too outrageous to be protected
under the Constitution and too unworthy to be privileged under the law
of torts."

In a recent lawsuit, former Scientology attorney Joseph Yanny
alleged that the church and its agents had implemented or plotted a
broad array of fair-game measures against him and other critics,
including intensive surveillance and dirty tricks.

Earlier this year, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded Yanny
$154,000 in legal fees that he said the church had refused to pay.

Among other things, Yanny said in his lawsuit that he attended a
1987 meeting at which top church officials and three private
detectives discussed blackmailing Los Angeles attorney Charles
O'Reilly, who won the multimillion-dollar jury award for Wollersheim.

According to Yanny, the plan was to steal O'Reilly's medical
records from the Betty Ford Clinic near Palm Springs, then exchange
them for a promise from O'Reilly that he would "ease off" during the
appeal process.

Yanny, who later had a bitter break with Scientology, said he
objected and the idea was dropped. The church denies such a discussion
ever took place.

"There is not a scintilla of independent evidence that Yanny's
counsel was ever sought for any illegal or fraudulent purpose," church
attorneys argued in court papers.

Numerous other church detractors have said in court documents and
interviews that they, too, were victims of fair game tactics even
after the policy supposedly was abandoned.

John G. Clark, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School, said he once criticized the church during
testimony before the Vermont legislature. Scientology "agents"
retaliated, Clark alleged in a 1985 lawsuit, by trying to destroy his
reputation and career.

He said in the lawsuit that they filed groundless complaints
against him with government agencies, posed as clients to infiltrate
his office, dug through his trash, implied that he slept with female
patients and offered a $25,000 reward for information that would put
him in jail.

"My sin," Clark said in an interview, "was publicly saying this is
a dangerous and harmful cult. They did a good job of showing I'm
right."

Scientologists, for their part, have described Clark as a
"professional deprogrammer," who in court cases has diagnosed members
of religious sects as mentally ill without conducting direct
examinations of them. They have branded his professional work as
fraudulent and his psychiatric theories as "childish and nonsensical."

In the words of one Scientology spokesman: "It's a crime that he's
walking on the street right now."

In 1988, the church paid Clark an undisclosed sum to drop his
lawsuit. In exchange for the money, Clark agreed never again to
publicly criticize Scientology.

On the opposite coast, psychiatrist Louis (Jolly) West, who
formerly directed UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute, said he also has
felt the wrath of Scientology.

West, an expert on thought control techniques, said his problems
began in 1980 after he published a psychiatric textbook that called
Scientology a cult.

West said Scientology attempted to get him fired by writing letters
to university officials suggesting that he is a CIA-backed fascist who
has advocated genocide and castration of minorities to curb crime.

He said Scientologists once managed to get inside a downtown Los
Angeles banquet room before guests arrived for a dinner celebrating
the Neuropsychiatric Institute's 25th anniversary. On each plate, West
said, was placed "an obscenely vicious diatribe" against him and the
institute -- neatly tied with a pink ribbon.

So consumed are some Scientologists by their zeal to punish foes
that they have violated the confidentiality of one of the religion's
most sacred practices, according to a number of former members.

These former members accuse others in the church of culling
confessional folders for information that can be used to embarrass,
discredit or blackmail hostile defectors -- a practice once called
"repugnant and outrageous" by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Some
of these former members say they themselves took part in the practice.

The confidential folders contain the parishioners' most intimate
secrets, disclosed during one-on-one counseling sessions that are
supposed to help devotees unburden their spirits. The church retains
the folders even after a member leaves.

Last year, former church attorney Yanny said in a sworn declaration
that he was fed information from confessional folders to help him
question former members during pretrial proceedings. Yanny said he
complained but was informed by two Scientology executives that it was
"standard practice."

Church executives have steadfastly denied that the confidentiality
of the folders has been breached. They maintain that "auditors" --
Scientologists who counsel other members -- must abide by a code of
conduct in which they promise never to divulge secrets revealed to
them "for punishment or personal gain."

"And that trust," the code states, "is sacred and never to be
betrayed."

Often, those who buck the church say their lives are suddenly
troubled by unexplained and untraceable events, ranging from hang-up
telephone calls to the mysterious deaths of pets.

Los Angeles attorney Leta Schlosser, for one, said someone
developed "an unusual interest" in her car trunk while she was part of
the legal team in the Wollersheim suit against Scientology. She said
it was broken into at least seven times.

She said her co-counsel, O'Reilly, discovered a tape recorder,
wired to his telephone line, hidden beneath some bushes outside his
home.

Then there is the British author, Russell Miller. After his
biography of Hubbard was published, an anonymous caller to police
implicated him in the unsolved ax-slaying of a South London private
eye.

Miller was interrogated by two detectives, who concluded that he
was innocent. Det. Sgt. Malcolm Davidson of Scotland Yard told the Los
Angeles Times that the caller "caused us to waste a lot of time
investigating" and "caused Mr. Miller some embarrassment."

There is no evidence that ties the church to any of these
incidents, and Scientology officials deny involvement in clandestine
harassment or illegal activities. They suggest that church foes may
themselves be responsible as part of an effort to discredit
Scientology.

Today, the Scientology movement is engaged in a sweeping effort to
gain influence across a broad swath of society, from schools to
businesses, in hopes of winning converts and creating a hospitable
environment for church expansion.

And Hubbard's followers apparently consider his theology of combat
an important component.

In 1987, they elevated to high doctrine a warning he wrote two
decades ago in a Scientology newspaper, addressed to "people who seek
to stop us."

"If you oppose Scientology we promptly look up -- and will find and
expose -- your crimes," he wrote. "If you leave us alone we will leave
you alone. It's very simple. Even a fool can grasp that.

"And don't underrate our ability to carry it out.... Those who try
to make life difficult for us are at once at risk."

PHOTO: Scientology attorney Earle C. Cooley, saying the church has
been forced to fight back and then has been unfairly chastised for its
aggressiveness.
PHOTO: Private investigators unnload equipment in Santa Barbara in
1984. Investigators conducted surveillance of David Mayo, a former top
Scientologist who formed a breakaway church called Advanced Ability
Center. Scientology says he conspired to steal its secret teachings.
PHOTOGRAPHER: LONDON SUNDAY TIMES
PHOTO: Ex-LAPD sergeant Eugene Ingram, left, and Officer Philip
Rodriguez. Ingram has investigated Scientology critics worldwide,
assisted by former police colleagues. Rodriguez helped him on one
occasion.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Los Angeles Times

Copyright (c) 1990 Times Mirror Company
Note: May not be reproduced or retransmitted without
permission. To obtain permission, call: (800) LATIMES,
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